General Musharraf’s Fading Mystique

Of course, right now General Musharraf appears about as mighty and unassailable as Ayub Khan did at the beginning of 1968 or Ziaul Haq was perceived twenty years later. The domestic opposition, under constant attack, seems weak and demoralized. Musharraf himself told Pakistani journalists in New York that he saw no reason to change course. President Bush has never told him (Musharraf) to give up his general’s uniform and thereby return Pakistan to civilian rule. The general sees his overtures towards Israel as a potential new source of external strength.

The American Jewish community, always at the forefront of the global struggle for human rights and democracy, might mute its criticism of Musharraf (or so he hopes) in return for the world’s second largest Muslim country possibly extending a hand of friendship to Israel. And the initiative could, at least in popular Pakistani perception, create the impression of interrupting the Indo-Israel entente.

Gimmicks are seldom a substitute for substantive actions at home as well as abroad. Despite his confidence bordering on arrogance, Musharraf’s UN trip did not play out as scripted. The general’s universally condemned remarks about rape victims in Pakistan diluted whatever media impact he had expected from his address to the leaders of the American Jewish community. Not all Jewish leaders were impressed by the general.

Apart from the rape comment fiasco, the greatest setback for General Musharraf came in the stalling of the India-Pakistan peace process. India and Pakistan are still talking but the absence of a breakthrough during Musharraf’s meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly with Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh denied Musharraf the success he had been betting on.

The pace of the peace process has slowed down as the number of Indians refusing to trust Musharraf has grown. The hardcore around Musharraf that remains committed to an ideological foreign policy casting India as a permanent enemy continues to thrust the Kashmir issue into the foreground -something the Indians do not like. Musharraf himself shows no sign of recognizing that the economic and military race with India is a losing proposition and that Pakistan’s friends such as the United States are fair-weather, and cannot be counted on in the contest with India.

Pakistani ideologues continue to assert that “some gain in Kashmir” must precede or accompany any decision to dismantle the infrastructure of anti-India Islamist militancy within Pakistan. Pakistani supporters of the peace initiative, on the other hand, argue that Pakistan must settle its differences with India before it loses the moment presented by post 9/11 US support.

Once Afghanistan is stabilized, and Al Qaeda mopped up, the Americans and their economic and military assistance will disappear, leaving Pakistan without a major ally. China, which was a reliable supporter against India, has been alarmed at Pakistan’s support for Islamist radicalism. It is moving towards an understanding with India an, therefore, Pakistan’s ability to depend on China as an ally would diminish over time. Pakistan may not be able to secure a reasonable deal from India in a few years time, when the conventional military gap between the two countries would have widened and the economic difference, coupled with major power re-alignments, would make Pakistan’s negotiating position untenable.

Just as there are a growing number of realists in Pakistan, however, there are others who think the negotiating process is a useful stratagem to buy time for further showdowns with India. Initially Musharraf cast himself in the mould of a realist but in recent months he has appeared as insufficiently convinced of the realist position or tilting towards the ideologues, at least on the question of India.

General Musharraf cannot move forward with the India-Pakistan peace process, or for that matter go beyond symbolic gestures towards Israel, because his institutional mandate from the Pakistani military does not go beyond such gestures. The Pakistan army has not made the institutional decision to relinquish political control or to voluntarily give up its position of privilege and power. That restricts Musharraf to his carefully balanced combination of foreign overtures and domestic machinations, with little prospect of substantive changes in the Pakistani establishment’s traditional paradigm.

The general’s international mystique is clearly wearing off and his ability to deliver on a wide array of international issues is becoming limited. If the peace process with India remains stalled; the promises of becoming a frontline state in the global struggle against anti-Semitism fall short and the hunt for Al-Qaeda yields less results than before, Musharraf would be able to depend even less on external factors to bolster his authority at home.

The writer is Director of Boston University’s Center for International Relations and author of Pakistan Between Mosque and Military (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2005)